Loving You
by Beautiful Reverie
Summary: Devastated, hurt by Yamaguchi Kumiko's rejection, Sawada Shin finally decided to give up on his love. But did he relly think that he was capable of doing that?


**Summary: **Shin finally decided to give up on Kumiko. But would his heart want him to?

**Loving You**

**Love Hurts**

He did not know how long he had been standing here.

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It was late afternoon. Though it had been scorching hot throughout the day, the sky suddenly darkened into this ominous grey, and in the blink of an eye came the most earth-shattering deluge.

School had ended hours ago but Sawada Shin was still lying on the rooftop. His friends had left wondering where the hell he had gone, without any knowledge that their most respected comrade had purposely evaded them to his usual hideout. Shin didn't want to see his friends, didn't want to go back to his apartment, spending yet another night with the ever-so-familiar simple self-cooked food, alone. Yes, alone as always, for hadn't he already been living like this for a couple of years? But the abrupt downpour broke off his stupor and forced him to drag his feet down the staircase.

The school was completely bereft of human beings, except for one lone figure sauntering along the hallway. How strange and funny it was, Shin mused, to see the normally boisterous and zoo-like Shirokin now quiet and solemn. It almost felt like all creatures had vanished into thin air without any vestige and he was the only one left on this humongous Earth. He chuckled quietly to himself as he reached the gate. Alone.

But he was wrong.

Before he could turn to his bag for his umbrella, Shin caught a flash of red which made his head jerk up immediately and his eyes widened slightly as he recognized those familiar pigtails, specs, that crimson tracksuit and without saying, their owner in no time. How interesting it was that one particular person could easily be distinguished merely with those unique features of hers.

Kumiko. Yamaguchi Kumiko.

There she was, under the shelter. She was sitting on a bench, her normally bouncing pigtails streaming down her shoulders in smooth, silky blackness, some disheveled tendrils sticking to the side of her round, wet face. Her ivory skin seemed to gleam in the faint light. Small and soaking wet like a little bird seeking refuge from the rain, she was obviously still oblivious to his presence.

Every muscle in his body tensed up. Every nerve in his brain started to panick. He stood there dumbfounded, his feet refusing to budge an inch. The only moving thing seemed to be his racing heart. The only thought running through his head right now was why this had to happen to him?

Because she was the last person on Earth he would expect to see.

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_It was over. Everything was over. How could he not have realized earlier that he had been such a fool all these years?_

'_Shin… We can't be together.'_

'_You are the son of a police commissioner. I'm the granddaughter of a yakuza. You are a student. I'm a teacher. No matter how I look at it, I can't imagine myself in a relationship with my student, much less a takagi. We belong to two different worlds.'_

'_I can't risk endangering my family. I can't risk losing my job. So please don't harbour any hope. It's impossible...'_

'_There are plenty of other nice, young, and __**normal**__ girls who can take better care of you than I can. It won't be long before you find yourself a person who truly loves you, willing to spend her life with you. And then, maybe you will even laugh at yourself upon looking back at this __**infatuation**__...'_

'_Forget about me…' _

_And he felt himself swallowed by a chasm of despair and never able to see the light again. _

_------_

_That very night, he drank himself to inebriation, as if drinking in his endless anguish. When limping helplessly along the dimly lit streets and in the dark of his apartment, he let out frustrated screams of excruciating agony – screams of a mortally wounded creature. Never before in his life had he felt such pain! Never before in his life had he experienced such feelings of broken-heartedness! His heart felt as though it'd been shattered into pieces. His poor furniture became the victims of his violent rage. The next whole week he was absent from school._

_During that week, spending the days brooding and despairing in his apartment, sequestered from any form of human communication, Shin somehow managed to gather himself in the depths of his depression. Had he always been trying in vain? Had he always been chasing after something that was and would always be forever out of his reach?_

_------_

_When he came back to school the next day, he was showered with copious care and affection from his gang. Kuma, Ucchi, Minami, Noda and the rest of the class were sick with worry over him. They asked him tons of questions, to which he merely gave perfunctory, evasive answers. __**She **__was also there, but not a word was heard from her, and he saw her, out of the corner of his eyes, continue talking to other teachers like nothing had happened.___

_And he hardly saw her from that day on. She was with them during Maths and Homeroom as usual. However, her lessons were impossibly quiet as she radically reduced her share of words, and as soon as lessons were finished, she fled the class as though in a constant hurry, raising questioning eyebrows. No one knew. Shin remained silent. So that's how it was. She wanted him to have nothing to do with her life. To her, Yamaguchi Kumiko, he, Sawada Shin, meant nothing than a shadow passing by._

_A student_

_A boy who was and would always be a hundred years away from her._

_A stranger… _

_It hurts._

_Love hurts._

**A/N: **Reviews? Yes? Yes? Yes!:D


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